Weekend Cooking

Since our cook/ housekeeper is away, I'm having to cook on a more regular basis, though my parents have been stars, supplying food unasked for weeks on end. Sunday morning we had an idli beakfast, idlis and coconut chutney by mom while I dished up my froend Monika's mother in law's peanut chutney recipe. I'm one of those people who finds peanuts totally addictive, especially in savoury form, so I have pretty much cleaned out what was left of the chutney, pairing is variously with butter-toasted pao at dinner last night, with crackers for a snack and then cold out of the fridge with hot idlis again this morning.Would highly recommend you make it a pantry staple!

Here's the recipe link: Kickass peanut chutney

For those too lazy to follow yet another link, here it is:

Ingredients:

1. 1 cup roasted peanuts ( I used packaged, pre-roasted and salted peanuts out of laziness)
2. 3-4 dry roasted dried red chillies
3. 2-3 cloves garlic
4. 1 small onion, chopped
5. 1 lime sized ball of tamarind, soaked in 1/2 cup warm water
6. 1/2 cup water

2 sprigs curry leaves
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp hing
1 tbsp oil ( peanut oil for choice)

In a little oil, cook the garlic till its dark brown but not burnt. Remove from the oil and fry the onion in the same oil till soft.
Grind together the first six ingredients to the required consistency - you decide if you like chutney runnier or thicker. Add salt to taste.
Heat the remaining oil in a tadka kadhai. Add the mustard seeds. When they pop, add the cumin, hing and lastly, washed curry leaves. Take off the heat and pour over the chutney. Bliss out!

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Then, for a late Sunday lunch as I just lost track of time, we had rajma by mom, with baked stuffed capsicum. The Capsicum could be a great meal by themselves, especially for anyone trying to go low-carb. I made the capsicum stuffings two ways. One was with a cabbage and potato stuffing from Monika's food blog. Another kind was a basic paneer bhurji, which actually worked out very well.

I love yellow and red capsicum but am not a big fan of the green ones, so this style of cooking actually made them delicious and the kids ate them up without a murmur. definitely going to repeat this...

Ingredients:
10 medium sized capsicums, cut into half each

Stuffing 1
1/2 small cabbage, cut into fine ribbons and soaked in water
2 potatoes, boiled and mashed
1 onion, julienned
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 inch ginger, crushed
2-3 green chillies, chopped fine
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp coriander powder
salt to taste
1/2 tbsp oil

Heat the oil. Add the garlic and ginger and cook over medium heat for 1-2 minutes. Add the spice powders and onion. Cook till the onion is translucent. Add the drained cabbage - the water clinging to the leaves will be enough to cook it, and stir to mix. Once the cabbage is cooked through, add the mashed potatoes and salt and mix well.

Stuffing 2
200 gms paneer, grated or crumbled
3 small tomatoes, chopped fine
1 medium onion, chopped fine
2-3 green chillies, chopped fine
Handful coriander leaves, cut into fine shreds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tbsp oil
Salt to taste
1/2 tsp turmeric if you like

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the cumin seeds and toast for a minute. Add the chillies and onion and cook till translucent. Add the tomatoes and cook until soft. Add the paneer and salt and cook for a couple more minutes. Turn off the heat, add the coriander leaves. If adding turmeric, add into the hot oil before putting in the cumin seeds.

For the Capsicum:
Prepare the capsicum by slicing each capsicum into half and clearing out the seeds. Pre-heat the oven at 180 degrees C. Rub the oven roasting pan with a thin slick of oil ( about half tbsp).
Fill half the capsicum halves with Stuffing 1 and the other half with Stuffing 2. Bake for 25 minutes and let rest for 5.

Enjoy with rice and a bean dish, and dahi, with rotis or just by themselves with a salad on the side!

Cabbage Salad

I love salads of all kinds and am always on the lookout for new types of salads to try. Over the years, I've come to realise that what makes for a good salad is the way one puts it together. by that, I mean that a good salad has to have a judicious juxtaposition of contrasts and complements - something soft and mushy against something hard and crunchy, something bland against a touch of spice, something sweet against something tangy...

I was getting creative in the kitchen some time ago, and I came up with a really nice cabbage salad which tastes great and also looks good. Give it a try!

Ingredients:

1 green or purple cabbage - very!! finely chopped into 2 inch shreds

1/2 pineapple, diced - or you can drain canned pineapple and use that

100 gms cheddar or processed cheese - diced

1 each of red, yellow and green bell pepper, cut into 2 inch long, thin shreds

Thai hot and sweet sauce

1 garlic clove

1. Mash the garlic clove and put it at the bottom of the salad bowl


2. Add the other ingredients, except the sauce


3. Add the sauce last and then stir to mix. Adjust the level of sauce to your taste - more or less spicy

This salad goes well with a variety of food and tastes great on its own too! You can add roasted nuts to it to add crunch - pecan or pine nuts go well.

Gujju Food

Yesterday I went out for lunch with two colleagues to nearby MGF Mall and we homed in on Rajdhani, the Gujju restaurant. The restaurant is on the top floor of the Mall in Gurgaon. It's got a slightly mixed decor, with vibrantly coloured walls and displays of red and blue vases from The Next Shop hanging cheek by jowl with mirrored wall hangings from the emporium. The menu is a set thali. We were among the early diners and got a 4-seater table as soon as we entered. The restaurant starts operations at 12 noon, so if you go earlier, they won't have any food.

The service is really quick. Within five minutes of being seated, we had been served a bottle of mineral water and our thalis had been placed on the table. the steel plates they use are a really large size, with an assortment of 7-8 small steel katoris, which I thought were really useful for portion control at home too and have resolved to buy.

The serving staff is friendly and goes out of their way to ensure that you are eating adequately and that your plate is never empty - not good for those on a diet. The servers come around to each diner and serve them the various foods out of steel katoris - like at a typical south Indian restaurant in south India. Starters were warm dhoklas and mashed aloo bhajias, as well as a finely cut cabbage sabzi, served with a sweet chutney and a coriander chutney, both of which were delicious. The aloo bhajias were made with mashed aloo spiced with red chilli powder and a hint of garlic, which tasted wonderful.

The main course menu was extensive - we had bhindi sabzi, dahi-baingan sabzi, alu sabzi, chole, gujarati dal, teekhi dal and rajasthani kadhi. This was accompanies by both rotis and theplas, with ghee on top if you so wished. Rice followed, along with top-ups of anything you desired, and they provided salty chaach to wash all this down. The food was excellent, and delicately spiced, not at all oily. I particularly enjoyed the bhindi as well as the baingan sabzi, and the gujarati dal - sweet and spicy and very thin - and my colleagues freaked on the kadhi and the cabbage. The aloo sabzi was the only thing not particularly noteworthy.

The dessert menu had 4 desserts, including rasgulla (which I thought incongruous), sooji ka halwa, aamras and one more to which I didn't pay attention, having frozen on the aamras. The desserts were delicious too, though a little over sweet. They brought an Indian variant of finger bowls - the waiter holds a brass jug with a pointed spout in one hand and a brass platter with holes in the bottom (like a sieve) held over a brass pot to catch the water, and pours out the water for you. A truly satisfying meal which left us content and yet not overstuffed. Recipe for the cabbage follows, as well as my deduction of the dahi-baingan recipe.

Cabbage Sabzi (South indian style)
1 cabbage - finely chopped (really finely chopped!)
Handful of grated coconut
1 tsp Black Mustard seeds
Salt to taste
1-2 tsp oil

1. Put the chopped cabbage into water and let it steep for 10 minutes.
2. Pour the oil into a wok and let it heat up
3. Put in the mustard seeds and wait till they pop - you'll hear and see the popping
4. When they are done popping, put in the cabbage and mix
5. Put a lid on the wok for about 5 minutes or so, depending on how tender and finely chopped the cabbage is.
6. Take the lid off and check the cabbage - it should be al dente, not mushy.
7. Add the salt to taste and mix well
8. Top with freshly grated coconut and serve with rotis or rice and a lentil dish

Additions: In South India, we typically add curry leaves along with the mustard seeds. I also like to add a pinch of asafoetida to cabbage sabzi - the flavours go well together and it cuts down on gas! We also usually add a couple of finely chopped green chillies to the oil after the mustard has stopped popping.

Variations - You can add green capsicum or peas to this vegetable. Add the capsicum before the cabbage, and if using peas, boil them in advance and then add after the cabbage is almost cooked.

Baingan sabzi with Dahi ( eggplant cooked with yoghurt) - my take

500 gm Small purple eggplants, quartered but with the stems still attached
2 red onions, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
yoghurt - one cup, whisked well
1 tsp - methi (fenugreek) seeds
1 tsp - mustard seeds
pinch turmeric
2 tbsp oil
salt to taste
red chilli powder to taste
handful curry leaves

1. Salt the eggplant and leave aside to sweat for fifteen minutes
2. Pour the oil into a wok and let heat at medium heat
3. Wipe off the eggplants and cook in the oil till well done. I sometimes cover the wok with a lid so the eggplant cooks softer, which helps it absorb the spices better.
4. Take the eggplants out and put on a tissue paper to absorb the oil.
5. To the oil left in the wok, add the turmeric and mustard seeds and wait for the seeds to pop. Then add the fenugreek seeds and the curry leaves.
6. When the fenugreek seeds darken, add the onion and stir well. Let the onions cook until almost translucent and add in the tomatoes. Stir well and let cook until the tomatoes are cooked but not mushy.
7. Add the eggplant and mix all the ingredients together. Add salt and chilli powder at this stage.
8. Once all the vegetables are well-mixed, pour in the whisked yoghurt and keep stirring gently for a minute or two so all the flavours meld together. You can adjust the quantity of yoghurt and spices to your liking.

This vegetable is great as an accompaniment to rotis and a simple dal. I'm planning to try this over the weekend, and I'll update the post to tell you how it turns out.